Oxygen therapy is the administration of oxygen as a therapeutic modality. It is widely used for a variety of purposes in both chronic and acute patient care as it is essential for cell metabolism, and in turn, tissue oxygenation is essential for all physiological functions. Oxygen therapy can be used to benefit the patient by increasing the supply of oxygen to the lungs and thereby increasing the availability of oxygen to the body tissues, especially when the patient is suffering from hypoxia and/or hypoxaemia. Oxygen therapy may be used both in applications in hospital or in home care. The main home care application of oxygen therapy is for patients having severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Oxygen may be administered in a number of ways. A preferable way of oxygen administration is given by a so called on demand generation of oxygen, or an in situ generation, respectively. Referring to this, commercial solutions, so-called oxygen concentrators, or separators, respectively, are widely known. These oxygen concentrators mostly separate oxygen from an oxygen comprising gas, so that the oxygen is provided on demand, i.e. directly before use. Most known oxygen concentrators require a compressor to compress the oxygen containing gas. Furthermore, oxygen, preferably pure oxygen, has to be generated. Therefore, most known oxygen concentrators comprise a membrane, in particular an organic membrane, a molecular sieve, or the like, to separate oxygen from the oxygen comprising gas. Alternatively, using a pressure swing adsorption, or vacuum swing adsorption is known.
One of the major drawbacks of the known oxygen concentrators is given by the costs which are generated with respect to producing and operating said devices. Additionally, by using swing processes such as pressure swing adsorption, the generated oxygen typically has a concentration of more than 88% but mostly below 95%, in particular of more than 90% but below 93%. These concentrations, however, might be too low for a plurality of applications.
Known from EP 2 196 235 A1 is a ceramic oxygen generating system for generating and delivering oxygen to a user. This system comprises an electrochemical oxygen generating means for producing a controlled amount and pressure of a desired product gas and an electronically controlled unit controlling the operation of the electrochemical oxygen generating system. The product gas from the gas generating system is thereby communicated to a regulator means for controlling the product flow to a user of the product gas. In order to generate oxygen, the system may comprise a low pressure subsystem which uses ceramic oxygen generating elements for purifying impure oxygen supplied by other oxygen generating techniques, such as pressure swing adsorption.
Using such a system for generating oxygen from an oxygen comprising gas, oxygen of a high purity may be provided. However, by using two oxygen separation devices, the maintenance costs by using the system may be rather high.